Trivia

By the mid-1940s, his personal and professional life were at such a low point that he was seriously considering committing suicide. His plan was to jump from the mountains above Santa Monica, but on his walk he met a priest and told him the whole story. The priest encouraged him to make a novena, instead. At the end of the nine days of prayer, he was offered an acting job from Universal Studios and never looked back.

He was the only member of the supporting cast of Batman (1966) to be in every single episode of the series.

Strikingly handsome in his youth, Hamilton--along with John Barrymore, Fredric March and Brian Donlevy--modeled as the Arrow (Shirt) Collar Man, and received more fan mail in the 1920s than box-office king Rudolph Valentino.

He was a distant cousin of Margaret Hamilton, with whom he appeared in By Your Leave (1934).

He made 268 films, both sound and silent, and played opposite such stars as Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Constance Bennett, Ann Sothern and Jean Arthur.

Appeared on the Thanksgiving Day cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1918, marching beside (and hungrily eyeing) a turkey.

Raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic household.

When he was six, Hamilton's right arm was badly shattered and there was little hope at the time that the wound would knit. His mother had been crippled years before in a streetcar accident and his eventual recovery was attributed to great religious faith by the family.

In Since You Went Away (1944) he appears only in a photograph. All of his scenes were edited out and left on the cutting room floor before final release.

Prior to becoming a film star, he was used as the model for the Arrow Collar man by artists Joseph Leyendecker on the back page cover of the "Saturday Evening Post." He also modeled for such other noted illustrators as James Montgomery Flagg, Arthur William Brown, Norman Rockwell, Charles Dana Gibson, and more.

He graduated from the Pasadena Playhouse School for Performing Arts in Pasadena, California.

On Batman (1966-1968) Yvonne Craig played Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) and Neil Hamilton played her father, Commissioner Gordon. But this was not the first time they acted together in a familial role. In the Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Lazy Lover (1958), Yvonne Craig played Patricia Faxon and Neil Hamilton played her step father Bertrand Allred.

Was good friends with Adam West.

First actor to portray the character of Nick Carraway on-screen in The Great Gatsby (1926).

Is the only actor to play Commissioner Gordon from the "Batman" franchise who shared the character's first name, James. Like his live-action successor Martin Patterson Hingle [Pat Hingle], he goes by his middle name.